This article is from page 71 of the 2011-04-19 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 71 JPG
AFTER the defeat to Laois the last day out when they were done by a late goal from Willie Hyland, Clare manager Ger O’Loughlin wasn’t too downcast when addressing the media about where it all went wrong. No point letting off steam at his players in public must have been the ‘Sparrow’s’ mantra to himself things like that are best left in doors and all that. Anyway, there was always the Carlow game – another game to put it up to his players to produce the win needed to reach a second successive league final. Put it this way, losing to Laois made the outcome of this game very predictable, a focused Clare to atone for the Laois aberration. And, so it happened, with O’Loughlin full of praise for this charges as he looked ahead to a final joust with old enemy Limerick on Sunday week.
“They gave us a very hard game below in Dr Cullen Park, but with the big wide open spaces of Cusack Park, it makes a big difference when you’re playing the likes of Carlow,” he says to start.
“I thought overall we were way better than them on the day and it’s a case of bringing that and a lot more to the final against Limerick
“The boys were well-focused. We saw some great displays by some lads. It’s a work in progress – I keep saying that to people.
“As you can see there we have another three or four new lads – Pat O’Connor, Conor McGrath, Cathal McInerney. We have no other choice – they are the future and we have to keep progressing,” added O’Loughlin before admitting to the scale of the task his side faces against Limerick in the decider.
“It’s a rebuilding job and I just feel that it’s great to get back into the final now and hopefully we can do ourselves justice against Limerick. We didn’t do that in the first game in the league.
“We had an awful lot of hurling done before that game. We had three or four challenge matches and played Waterford Crystal and got a lot out of it. We were beaten by a stronger team on the day. They were better organised than us. I just hoping that the couple of weeks and the couple of matches might have brought us on.
“We have such youth on our team that you have to have them really focused on the day to get the best out of them. Sometimes you can’t put your finger on some of the displays, because we’re working hard in training and we’ve a great bunch of lads, but I don’t know whether it’s concentration of whether it’s something else.
“We just need to try and make sure that it’s right for the Limerick game,” O’Loughlin added.